Eyes Wide Shut
by Virgo Writer
Summary: She had kidded herself into believing it was all innocent, but sometimes it's just easier not seeing. Third-person Payson/Sasha drabble.
1. Blind

**Eyes Wide Shut**

Disclaimer: I do not own **Make It or Break It**.

**

* * *

**

Summary: She had kidded herself into believing it was all innocent, but sometimes it's just easier not seeing. Third-person Payson/Sasha

* * *

**Eyes Wide Shut**

Kim Keeler wasn't blind, although sometimes she wished she were. She saw it the first moment he walked into the gym, taking stock of each of the elites and pausing for just a moment longer when he got to Payson – her daughter.

She had read it clear as day on his face, even though it only flashed for an instant and she was seeing it all from a behind the glass. Attraction – that's what she saw in his stormy blue eyes, mixed in with the adoration and awe. Completely unprovoked and intolerable attraction.

As she got to know Sasha better – as she began to see him as a friend and even the son she never had – she learnt to pretend that she hadn't seen it in the same way that Sasha learnt to pretend he hadn't felt it. He never acknowledged the attraction and so she never called him on it rather than risking the delicate fabric of their friendship. She wondered sometimes if he even realized what was building between him and his young gymnast or if he had simply buried those feelings completely, determined never to act on them or even imagine what the world might be like if he could.

Some things were harder to stay blind to than others. The warm smile he sometimes wore that could only be engendered by one person. The inordinate concern he showed leading up to the Nationals, fretting over even the slightest show of pain or discomfort. The distraught look of fear and pain on his usually stoic features when she fell from her best apparatus. It wasn't the expression of a coach concerned over the fate of his athlete – it was that of a man who looked like he was about to lose the most precious thing in his existence. Payson was quite possibly the love of his life.

The realization had produced mixed feelings in Kim at the time. On the one hand, Sasha was a man whom she respected and adored in her own motherly way, and if things had been different, he'd probably be exactly the kind of man she would want her daughter to be with. On the other hand, he was Payson's coach – he was in a position of trust and authority – and had more than ten years of experience over her young and naïve, sixteen-year-old daughter.

In retrospect, her response to that equivocation was not one of her proudest moments, but it seemed necessary at the time. It was unduly manipulative and even bordered on cruel, but she told herself it was for his own good, and Payson's by extension. Those feelings couldn't stay buried forever, and the result could be devastating for both parties. It was surely for the best that she intervened before things got too serious.

So she pushed him – with a great deal of subtlety and finesse – towards Summer Van Horne in the hopes that she would prove more than a mere distraction. She was hedging all of her bets upon transference, those suppressed feelings being directed at an appropriate alternate that was kind of like the real thing in the most superficial ways. It was a useless endeavour – his heart could only be fooled into feeling for the alternate for so long before it longed for the real thing once again.

And while she focused all of her efforts upon Sasha, she had been wilfully blind to Payson in all of this, failing to see the small changes in her daughter until it was already too late. It had never been simply a one-sided attraction – that had always been the thing that concerned her most. She just hadn't expected Payson to be the one to make the first move.

She imagined it was guilt that made her go after him and try to coax him back to The Rock. Or maybe she hadn't tried at all. Perhaps it had all just been for show, because if she had really wanted him back, she could have made it impossible for him to refuse.

She should have known in the end it would be Payson that brought him back. In the same way he surely knew that he couldn't have stayed away forever. He had left his heart in Boulder, Colorado, and even a fool could see it wasn't with Summer Van Horne.

They would always be drawn to one another no matter how hard either of them tried to run from it.

And maybe she was blind, because she should been able to see that from the start. There are some things we can't change and then there are those that we shouldn't. It was like trying to stop the tide.

It was fate.

And she had been a fool for not seeing it sooner.

~FIN~

I wrote this a while ago when I was trying to get into Kim Keeler's head for **Just a Number**, but I've been keeping it until the new season started because there is a little bit of a spoiler in there. After seeing the first episode, Kim really didn't try all that hard to get Sasha back so thankfully this still fit. They had a whole conversation without once mentioning Payson (or Lauren for that matter). He already stayed once for Payson and I think the words "Payson needs you" (or even "the girls need you") would have been more than enough to make Sasha stay.

It's all drabble nonsense really, but I like the idea of a subtly manipulative mother and Kim was pushing a little too hard on the Summer/Sasha business, so maybe that's why. Let me know what you think.


	2. If You're Gone

Disclaimer: I do not own **Make It or Break It**.

**EYES WIDE SHUT**

Yay! Just had my last exam, and to celebrate you all get a drabble. Well, not really, but I suppose it sort of looks that way.

I wasn't expecting to write a followup, but this seemed to follow on quite nicely from where that one left off. It's a lot more hopeful than the first part and even has dialogue (oh my!). Kim's just so fun to write I can't seem to leave her alone in this.

* * *

If You're Gone

"Payson says you're getting ready to leave," Kim said bluntly, watching Sasha intently. He stilled for a moment before looking up at her, taking a moment to try to mask his thoughts.

It was a pointless endeavour. Sasha was a terrible liar – it was one of the reasons Kim had taken to him so quickly – and his emotions were written all over his face even as he tried to protest against her accusation. His eyes were like an open book, expressing sadness, guilt, longing, and regret.

"Don't lie to me, Sasha," she said in a cool tone. "I know she's right.

"It must be awful to have someone who knows you so well," she mused thoughtfully.

She wasn't talking about herself – she was talking about Payson who had realized his next move before anyone else even suspected a thing. Sasha's expression filtered between confusion and shock as he slowly reached the same conclusion.

"So what's stopping you?" she asked him, an eyebrow raised challengingly in an expression she often saw mirrored in Payson. "If you're going to leave them, why aren't you gone already?"

Sasha gave a harrowing sigh and dropped his head into his hands as he hunched over his desk. "I don't want to leave, Kim," he tried to explain, "but I have to. I've done what I promised to do – taken them as far as I'm supposed to. Now I have to go."

"And what?" she said, pushing him to admit the truth. "Now you're just biding your time?

"It's going to hurt her the same whether you leave today or tomorrow," she said with an air of frustration. "You might as well just get it over and done with – remove the bandage in one fell swoop."

"I can't leave them without a coach," he admitted hopeless, lifting his head. She could read the lie in his eyes – could see that this was just his justification for hanging around when he knew in his heart he should be gone.

"I was selfish last time," he said guiltily, "leaving them all alone like that and expecting them to get by on their own. I only did more damage by leaving like that. I won't make the same mistake twice."

Kim scoffed incredulously, the sound coming out harsher and more judgmental than she intended. She only meant to make Sasha see sense, but sometimes the man was too honourable for his own good.

"Do you honestly believe that leaving them with a coach will make up for you deserting them? Twice," she pointed out. "Even they have their limits, Sasha."

He groaned in frustration, anger rising his voice as he replied, "What choice do I have? I can't stay here."

"Why?" she asked plainly, that one word making the anger seep from his body like a deflating balloon. His gaze met hers, his eyes desperately pleading with her to take back that one word: _please don't make me say it_.

She sighed to herself and crossed over to Sasha's side of the room, lightly placing her hand on his shoulder. "I probably should have said this a long time ago," she said with an apologetic smile. He studied her, not knowing what she was about to say or how much it would change things between them.

"You don't have to punish yourself for loving her."

He slumped forward a little, the weight of the secret lifting from his shoulders, only to be replaced by the burden of guilt. He turned his face up towards her, the apology written all over his tormented features. "I'm so sorry, Kim," he said sorrowfully. "I never meant to . . . I never . . . It's a complete breach of trust and our friendship and . . . I'm so sorry, Kim."

"For falling in love with my daughter?" she asked, finally saying what neither of them had said aloud for close to a year.

He didn't say anything, but she knew it was true – like the rest of his emotions, he couldn't mask love that shined through his every gesture towards seventeen year old daughter. It was something she had tried to deny for awhile, but there came a point when she was only fooling herself.

"Or for getting ready to break her heart all over again?" she continued, watching him sink back in his chair. She nodded sympathetically, once again reading his completely undisguised emotions.

"If you leave now she'll never forgive you," she promised him seriously. "You'll have lost her forever."

"I know," he agreed, his tone firm and determined. "That's why I have to leave.

"If I leave now she'll be free to find someone else," he said lowly. "Someone who deserves her – whose mere presence doesn't hurt her."

The pain that filtered through his eyes and choked his voice was so apparent that Kim felt her own heart clench in sympathy. "He won't make her happy," she warned him, smiling sadly as she spoke.

Sasha shrugged, feigning indifference. "He won't make her cry either," he pointed out. "I think I could live with that."

He let the thought hang heavily between them, silence settling over the small gym office as Kim slipped back into her own desk. For a moment he thought that the conversation was over and Kim was prepared to let him leave without out further protest.

"For what it's worth, Sasha," she said quietly, without looking up form her desk, "I'd really like it if you'd stay."

"I'll think about," he said, the best that he could offer her in response. "I-I still have to find them a coach before I go," he added weakly.

Kim nodded. "Just take your time," she encouraged lightly. "Take as long as you need."

~FIN~


End file.
